Friday, 22 December 2017

In the previous posts from the SgtPepperChannel blog we have covered Beatles references in songs and cartoons TV series and today we will look at the cinema and TV films with references to the Beatles as well as any music featuring Beatles songs (covers included).

I have to admit that collecting these 200 (and over) references was almost an impossible task.

All the forums I consulted reported references without giving much explanation, nor whether it was a reference in the dialogue, either a song played during the credits or something that, whoever commented it, considered it a reference (people often make abstract considerations). Also, I have encountered a lot mistakes that wasted my time; and to make it worst Google places most of these blogs atop of the search; because of this as well as all the wrong mentions I got in the comments of the first YouTube collection, the realization of the second collection has been an extremely complicated job to complete.

Luckily the SgtPepperChannel is here to wipe away all those useless forums and replace them all with this one: an accurate straight-to-the-point citation for each reference. No "bla bla bla" !

Before we start I need to point out two very important things:

1) Paul McCartney was a Beatles and the fact that he played with Wings doesn't change his status, so, if you hear songs from Wings do not be confused, just listen to the song and get on with your life.

I couldn't help noticing a certain level of hate in the comments regarding Wings songs. Of course none of the cowards that commented replied to my question: "What about John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy"? That's NO BEATLES either, and it came much earlier than Wings. Were you sleeping ?"

2) This is a movie collection ... not cartoons ... there's a video + blog for that. However, feel free to suggest any cartoon reference if you know any, just, please do not say: "you forgot ...", it sounds rude.

I have to admit that I found a lot of suggestions in the comments as well as corrections: there are two mistakes in the second video collection. One is just an editing mistake: the title at minute 36:27 should be “Licence to drive” and not “Prick up your ears”.

*The second mistake is the whole reference for the Mexican movie El Topo at minute 30:35, that clip is a (failed) sync experiment from a Youtuber called David Plate. That clip was saved and forgotten in my hard drive for years. The film received some financial support from John Lennon and was distributed across the United States through ABKCO Films, owned by Allen Klein. And that's the only Beatles connection I can make. I can’t tell if at the time the video description said it was an experiment, I probably should have suspected it. I apology about it.

Please note that this video is made with zero budget, that means the clips I used are the clips I found, some are not in English language, if my search didn't produced any better results is because I had to move on and search for other videos.

FULL MOVIES AND EXTENDED SCENES!!!

First full movie I want to share with you is the second listed on the second collection: My Dinner With Jimi, a 2003 comedy film about the Turtles visit to UK in 1967.

Here's just the scenes from My Dinner With Jimi featuring the Beatles compiled into one video.

The other Jimi Hendrix film featured in this collection is All By My Side here the scene of the movie where the Experience play Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in front of the Beatles and the real live scene from 1967 (watch both clips for comparison).

A very particular recent good fictional shortfilm called Snodgrass. It was produced a series of episodes for Sky One in 2013, but it stopped at the pilot episode. Probably the director exaggerated with the drama in the story and the excessive strong scouse accent given to John Lennon's actor makes it not so appealing for non-Beatles fans.
The video is available on YouTube, but I will share another upload since the first uploader keeps on modify the title in the video, often attributing things that has nothing to do with it (at some point it was titled "if John Lennon died in 1962").

And the other shortfilm from this collection that deserves its own spotlight is Turn Me On Dead Man, a 2009 Paul is dead parody directed by Adam Blake Carver. Watch out for the last song!

The next clip deserved a bit more of space than the 40 seconds from the main video collection. In the film Guardians of the Galaxy the song My Sweet Lord (written by George Harrison) has been used for two minutes long. Normally movies do not play music from the soundtrack for too long. I apology for the audio as it not the best on this list.

A clip with some Lennon music is from the animated film Mr. Peabody & Sherman where Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) by John Lennon is featured in a sort of dog-father figure .... just watch.

Paul McCartney wrote the song In The Blink of an Eye appositely for the animated film Ethel & Ernest in 2016. Strangely , the beautiful song is only played at the end during the credit roll.

This next clips doesn't feature directly Beatles music, but a choir of students singing Give Peace A Chance against police brutality. The film is called The Strawberry Statement.

Yet, another interesting credit roll is the one of Children of men where in the official released they used Lennon's Bring On the Lucie (Freda Peeple), and Tomorrow Never Know in an alternate ending (https://www.bitchute.com/video/cv4yite3OrZG).

Before moving on, I'd like to share the last clip with some real Beatles music:
In the opening of the film Dinner for Schmucks the song The Fool On The Hill is played.

Dixie is a character in the movie The Million Dollar Hotel. He believes he was the uncredited fifth Beatle and he wrote most of the fab four catalogue on his own. In this clip he sings a very interesting version of I AM THE WALRUS.

Before sharing other full clips/films I would like to post the following clip.
The day after I published the second collection video I found a few more clips online: there is a movie from the 1992 called Secret, and it is filled with Beatles music and references.

Another one is this very bad produced film from 1984 called “Desperate Teenage Lovedolls", there are in total three Beatles references:

Through, for many this has little to do with the Beatles, I believe that the Travelling Wilburys are as important as Wings and should deserve respect from Beatles fans. The song End of the line is played as the opening for the film Checking Out (1989).

A movie with a very beatlesque is called The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby is the collective title of three films written and directed by Ned Benson. The films star Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy, and are Benson's first feature film project.

Eleanor's parents named her after the Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby", as they met waiting for a rumored Beatles concert in New York that never happened.

At some point I had enough of reading “you forgot Across the Universe” in the comments that, even it is NOT a movie I included anyway (that may save the video a few dislikes). However Across the Universe is a musical … and a pretty bad one!

I haven’t watched it, but I tried …. It was just too damn boring for me, and the Beatles songs sounds terribly cheesy and out-of-place … the story revolving the song has nothing to do with what goes on in the film. (enough ranting!)

So, here’s a collection of Beatles musicals

BIOGRAPHY MOVIES

I also created a collection featuring The Beatles Biography Movies, this is the list of movies.
This is a samples and short trailer collection of all the biographical movies featuring the Beatles played by other actors, or as parodies. Apart from BackBeat and Lennon Naked, all the trailers are edited or made appositely for this video.

As this collection was complied in 2014, the recent The Fifth Beatle animated movie is missing in the list, but yo can watch the trailer here : https://youtu.be/apolYX6wBOw

Most biographical Beatles movies can be found in full on YouTube (you can use this playlist), but a few movies aren’t as easy to find. One of them is The Hours and Times, a fictional story based on the holiday John Lennon and Brian Epstein spent together in Barcelona in 1963. This is a clip from the movie:

There is yet another movie on John Lennon's life made in 1985. I haven't seen the whole film in full yet, so I can't describe in particulars. However, there are a couple of clips on YouTube that gives a ruff idea. The movie is called John Lennon - A Journey in the Life and John's part is played by Tim McEvoy (as teenager John) and Tony Forsyth (as adult John).Here some more info: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/468295/John-Lennon-A-Journey-in-the-Life/

BEATLES FEATURED IN NON-BEATLES DOCUMENTARIES

While researching for the second references in movies collection I came across a lot of citations of Beatles (and ex-Beatles) appearances in documentaries. I avoided all Beatles documentaries and concentrated only in the non-beatle ones. However, I appositely left a lot of the research out for a future PART TWO of the following video, hoping I will get some suggestion in the comments (which, sometimes are very useful and more reliable than what often reported in blogs)

A bit too often the vultures from The Jungle Book are
referred as a Beatles resemblance, but is it really so. They surely have a
moptop hairdo and a silly scouse accent, but, during the film creation they
lost part of the fab four appearance. For example, they originally were a rock’n’roll
vocal group, then the beat song and the dancing got swapped with an a-Capella boring
song and so other signatures that may have made those vultures more beatlesque.

Watch these two short clips about the vultures from The
Jungle Book.

TO BE CONTINUED ... COME BACK HERE NEXT WEEK ... I'LL ADD MORE CLIPS AND ANNOTATIONS

Friday, 24 November 2017

There are numerous documentaries about the Beatles that it is almost impossible to list them all; especially since 2013, at least two documentary films have been produced each year. I made a playlist of the few surviving documentaries on YouTube (which I am constantly updating), it starts with the first main Beatles documentary "The Long and Winding Road", a documentary co-produced by ex-roadie and Apple Corps executive Neil Aspinall and Apple Films Limited: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uV_086oXZA&list=PLlqXiBY2sa0QT89mzZGuUbDReMLhhA7E8.

Of course, there are a few must-watch Beatles documentaries that should be seen before watching any other documentary about the band; those films are: the "Anthology" from 1995/96 and John Lennon's "Imagine" from 1988.

However, I'm here to share a couple of documentary that can't be found on YouTube ... or anywhere online (at least not easy to find, especially when the uploaders title them differently from the original/official name).

Beatles on Records

The first is a documentary made entirely using audio interviews and music from the Beatles and George Martin called Beatles on Records produced by History Channel in 2009.
This documentary is also available on YouTube under the name Beatles in the studio and has Spanish subtitles.

Note: there is a little mistake at minute 3'25" when it comes to date the publishing of Please Please Me: PPM was released in March 1963, not January as this documentary says ....

All You Need Is Cash

Another pretty interesting documentary is “All You Need Is Cash” - Not to be confused with the Rutles film !

This is a Channel 4 (UK) documentary from 2007 about The Beatles' finances, tax & business deals from the early days to the present. Features interviews with Phillip Norman, George Martin, NEMS Director Geoffrey Ellis, documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles, Geoff Wonfor, Lew Grade, May Pang and Beatles author Allan Kozinn. http://bootlegzone.com/album.php?name=ycdvd067

These is the poster of Beatles on records (2009), All You Need Is Cash (2007) and Parting Ways (2010)

Parting Ways

"Parting Ways" is a 52 minutes documentary about the life of the Beatles after their split in 1970. Going in the order of John, Paul, George and Ringo, each of the Beatles is given a little over 10 minutes of air time in this film that seems to take a lot of liberties and uses a lot of stock film footage that was also used in Strange Fruit.

A less interesting but not notorious documentary is "All Together Now": a 2008 documentary on the creation and behind the scenes of the Cirque du Soleil stage production of "LOVE" and partnership between the remaining Beatles and families.

These are the posters for All Together Now and Cirque du Soleil.

Magical Mystery Tour documentaries

In August 2012, a deluxe edition of the Magical Mystery Tour was released in the US. Among the extras there was a 19 minutes documentary produced by BBC simply called “The making of the Magical Mystery Tour”.

And another 2012 BBC production for the Magical Mystery Tour documentary is called Magical Mystery Tour Revisited (BBC Arena Special). This documentary is available to watch in the BBC website for UK residents but no one else, so, to make it visible to everybody, I uploaded on my archive channel.

The last one for now will be a TV special from 1975: All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music, featuring: Twist and Shout", The Cavern Club, The Beatles in Hamburg, The Beatles' 1965 US tour, Bobby soxers, Skiffle, Mersey Beat, Summer of Love, Jane Fonda's birthday party, "House of the Rising Sun", Apple Boutique, Monterey Pop Festival, "All You Need Is Love", "Eight Miles High", "More popular than Jesus", Brian Epstein's death.
Interviewees: Paul McCartney, Allan Williams, Brian Epstein, George Martin, John Lennon, Murray the K, Derek Taylor, Roger McGuinn, Mike Love, The Beach Boys, Carl Wilson, Donovan, Bill Graham (promoter), The Animals, Ravi Shankar, George Harrison, The Mamas & the Papas, Tommy Charles, WACI, Robert Shelton (Ku Klux Klan)
Scriptwriter: Derek Taylor
Directed by Tony Palmer
Original air date: May, 14 1977 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Need_Is_Love:_The_Story_of_Popular_Music

Follow The Beatles

Going back to 1964, following the release of the film A Hard day's Night, a short documentary of the making of the film/behind the scenes, containing footage filmed on location and during a recording session at Abbey Road studios on February 1964, was released under the name Follow The Beatles and was presented by Robert Robinson. MORE INFO

Monday, 6 November 2017

Our World was the first live television production, which was broadcast worldwide on 25 June 1967 via satellite.
During the program events from around the world were shown, perhaps the Beatles sequence is the most popular of this TV show. Among the guests, singing the chorus during the performance, were members of The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Moon and Graham Nash.
The Beatles were live at 8:54 GMT (that's amazing! How did they get John out of bed so early?!)
... and a special hand-clap for the Australians that got up at 4.50 AM ! ☺
More details can be found on Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_World_(TV_special)
and here : https://www.honeysucklecreek.net/other_stations/cooby_creek/our_world.html
... I'm more interested in showing the actual film, which speaks for itself.

Colour TVs weren't as common as today back in the 60s, so the program was broadcasted in black and white, however, in 1995, a colourised version was created for TV special The Beatles Anthology, using colour photographs taken at the scene as reference.

Beatles references and appearances in Puppet Showshttps://youtu.be/U6KJJjEK4AoFeaturing: The Muppet Show, Sesame Street/Sesame Tree (one is from US the other from UK), Spitting Image and more.

There are many blogs
that treat subjects like Beatles references and appearances in songs, movies
and general pop culture. However, these blogs usually only talk about it,
except in a few occasions a link is thrown in, but most of the times they leave
the actual reference to you to find. In the SgtPepperChannel blog and channel we covered most of
the references in music and films, both with a 50 minutes video and this time
we will look at all the Beatles references and appearances in cartoons from TV Series
and puppets animations/sketches from kids programs. Making these sort of video is almost impossible
to release publicly as copyright infringements usually ends up in taking the
video down, in fact the YouTube upload lasted less than a week and was barely viewed (it got only 3000 views), so, one more time Google Drive comes at hand.This compilation contains the full episode of Celebrity Deathmatch, the unedited
musicvideo of Ringo's song in The Powerpuff Girls, the extended scene of Ned
Flander's Beatles collection (The Simpsons) and the unedited Mad Mod chase from
Teen-Titans. And it also contains the clips from the "Beatles on Puppet Shows".
This blog is great if you want to share both subjects at once.Let me apology on advance for any eventual mistake or misspelling.

There is a weird recurrence every time I upload a big
project like this the main video of this blog, and it is that, as soon as I publish
the new video I find a similar upload that could have helped me a lot during my
research. In this case I found three Simpsons clips compilations with a few
clips missing on this blog collection. The following 3 videos are linked
straight to the point.

The Something About The Beatles podcast presented a special episode dedicated to the references to
the Beatles in the Simpsons cartoon. Unfortunately, I can’t embed the podcast
to this vlog, so you will have to click this link to access it. http://somethingaboutthebeatles.com/122-simpsons-stories/

This podcast mentions a few clips missing from the main
video of this blog.
A very funny one is the end of the credits in “D'oh-in' in the Wind” (S10E06)
where homer said “I buried Flanders”.

CLIP COMING SOON !

One last Beatles reference missing from the main video can be found in the episode "Rock Bottom", but it appears very quickly.

So, here's a screenshot of the actual reference.

The other is from “The Mysterious Voyage of Homer” (S08E09)
quoting “goo goo g'joob !”

A similar (trippy) clip can be seen in the episode S02Ep12 A Sharkwork Orange of Eak! The Cat.

On JoJo's Bizarre Adventure many of the character's names are references to the Beatles. Example: Erina Pendleton's name is possibly based on a mispronunciation of Eleanor Rigby ; Rubber Soul is named after the Beatles album Rubber Soul. ; Ghiaccio's White Album is named after the Beatles' album "The Beatles", nicknamed "White Album" by the fans ; Lucy Steel's Stand is named after the song of the same name by The Beatles; and others ...See the full list here: http://jojo.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_cultural_references_in_JoJo%27s_Bizarre_AdventureAs all the episodes are in Japanese, it was too demanding to follow the whole episode(s) only to understand who is who and if the clip is worth to be used; also I had trouble distinguishing the references in the cartoon from the one in the comic book … it is just too much work for this animation series.

An episode of Star vs the Forces of Evil features a long scene that resemble the Sea of Time from the film Yellow Submarine: https://youtu.be/69AHO_dARt4?t=4m46sSuperjail! , the American adult animated television series produced by Augenblick Studios has another sort of the Yellow Submarine parody, this time it is the Sea of Monsters:

And the cartoon The Loud House briefly mention the song All you need is love.

This clip features Beatles albums portrayed by Spongebob, however, there are no direct references, just use a bit of imagination to get the connections.

The first has to be the one of The Powerpuff Girls called "Meet the Beat
Alls", the entire episode is a Beatles reference. The plot goes that the
for villains joins together and becomes invincible so get called the Beat-Alls. You can check all the references in this video : https://youtu.be/7raxJUDldDs

Another interesting cartoon that is not mentioned in the main collection is the episode number four two of the second season of BoJack Horseman called "After the Party". In this episode there is a very special guest: Paul McCartney! Indeed that’s Sir McCartney voicing himself.
The episode was aired on July 17, 2015.
Here’s the full clip: Paul’s scene is at the end.Alternately use this link: https://www.bitchute.com/video/jcpnngCpoWlJ

And here's just the ending clip featuring Paul's cameo.

Same thing for the
children cartoon Wonder Pets!. The episode "Save The Beetles!" has
the fab four in beetle version as main characters throughout he entire video.
The Beetles get stuck with their submarine among some seaweed and Wonderpets
save them. The Beetles play a concert to thank them. This cartoon is more suitable for a young public.Wonder Pets: https://my.mail.ru//mail/billy.shears/video/_myvideo/66.html

Another cartoon with
"beetles" as main characters is Timon & Pumbaa in the episode
"Rocky Mountain Lie". Sorry for the format of this video.

The next cartoons are
(no wonder) from The Simpsons (Matt Groening is a big fan).
The one with most references is the first episode of season 5, "Homer's
Barbershop Quartet". The plot resembles a in many aspects stories of the Beatles
and references so many Beatles things; also, in this episode George Harrison plays a cameo as himself in two scenes.

If you listened
closely at the music in the credits you may have heard some backwards voices.
That's Paul reading a recipe for a really ripping lentil soup ! Here you can
hear that message played in reverse.The other Beatle to
appear as voicing of own character is Ringo Starr. Ringo has the most lines
between the three episodes ... well, as we know Ringo is a good actor. This is the
episode number 218 ("Brush With Greatness").

The other Simpsons episodes with most references to the Beatles is "The Bart of War" (Season 14 episode 21). Bart and Milhouse break into Ned Flander's basement/Beatles Museum … and the wreck it. Embedded in this blog is the full clip of the scene, otherwise use this link if you fancy watching the whole episode : https://my.mail.ru/mail/billy.shears/video/_myvideo/71.html

************************************************************
Since I'm sharing full episodes here's a one with a short parody of the
Beatles/Simon & Garfunkel performance at the Ed Sullivan Show made by
Animaniacs. The trilogy episode (Season 3 Episode 15) has a reference in the
name : "A Hard Day's Warner / Gimme a Break / Please Please Please Get a
Life Foundation".

If you would like to
see in full some of the cartoons presented in this collection let me know in
the comments. For now, I think these are the ones who need to be seen in full.

In case anyone of you is Italian, I have the clip from Detective Conan dubbed
in Italian. And if you speak Spanish I have the clip from "Communuts" by
Histeria! in Spanish.An honorable mention
goes to The Simpsons, Sesame Tree and Teletubbies doing the Abbey Road crossing.************************************************************PUPPET SHOWS BEATLES REFERENCEThe main idea was to make a unique video for cartoons and puppetry, both because I wanted to keep the video to a certain length and also because many fonts complain that puppets are not animation.

But, since the YouTube upload has been deleted the two subjects will be blended into a unique video.However part 1 of the video is just cartoons, part 2 is puppets.
An extended clip I could share is the one produced in 1988 by Spitting Image featuring Paul McCartney, The Who, The Rolling Stones and other rock stars. Somehow most of you find these clips from Spitting Image disturbing. So, maybe viewer discretion is advised.

************************************************************
This is actually the third time I made and published this video and every time
it got blocked after reaching thousands of views, but, because it is an
interesting subject I don't mind re-working on it.From now on this compilation will be my backup video.
If you would like sharing this video but you think it is too long, then there
is a SUPERCUTS version too available !If you know any other reference that wasn't listed here, please leave a comment
(or leave it on the main YouTube video: https://youtu.be/lOrOz5fvSxU

There is an episode of the Simpsons where Homer and Milhouse sing Stand
By Me to Bart. The Beatles were big fans of Ben E. King and jammed upon
it during the Twickenham Session, also John Lennon made it famous with
his 1975 album Rock 'n' Roll. https://youtu.be/UJYHjsN3Q10